This post originates from a segment on The Daily Tech News Show for March 6th 2025, find the show here: https://dailytechnewsshow.com

Colossal is a company founded in 2021 that has a goal to de-extinct the mammoth. Which it hasn’t done yet, but it has made a very small start. Dr. Niki explains. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00684-1

The preprint (cute pictures!): https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.03.641227v1

If you know me by now, then you know if there’s a mammoth de-extinction story I’m gonna cover it on DTNS. Colossal is the company behind many of these stories. On March 4th  they announced their “wooly mouse”, calling it “a watershed movement in their de-extinction mission” in their press release that accompanied a preprint. If you are unfamiliar, preprints are early versions of scientific manuscripts that have not yet undergone peer-review.

Tom- I am guessing you disagree?

Colossal’s team used gene-editing to create mice with mutations they claim are “mammoth-centric”. Importantly, they tested gene mutations that affect mice and not mammoths.

These mutated mice have a pretty fantastic stage name: the colossal woolly mouse. However, science is already familiar with woolly mice, as certain mutations or knockouts established in the 1970’s are known to produce extra fuzzy mice. Like dogs and pigeons in the past, there are also breeders of fancy mice that go after these kinds of traits.

Tpm- On DTNS we covered together a paper  on mammoth genes discovered by this same group? Did they use those?

 Zero genetic changes directly related to mammoth DNA were a part of this experiment. Those five candidate genes the Colossal team found in woolly mammoth and published, were not were not part of the current experiment. Basically, these mice don’t tell us anything about mammoths, other than the fact that they’re really good for PR, as colossal is now worth $10 billion despite no real advancements happening there since they were founded in 2021 (and we’ve probably covered every big study they put out). One of my first DTNS lives, episode 4447, was about dodo cloning by colossal. You can guess how successful they were then. 

Tom- So we’re still no closer to a mammoth version of Jurassic Park?

The idea of a woolly mammoth in 2028 is ridiculous and even if it were possible, As put by Bethany Brookshire on bluesky, it would just be an “Asian elephant in a mammoth onesie”.

I want to note that the authors of the preprint have filed a patent application based on their work.

Thanks to a breakdown by Tori Herridge on bluesky for some of the background information and links.

Other Colossal coverage on DTNS:

Cloning Dodos is for the Birds – DTNS 4447

Unfolding Mammoth Jerky – DTNS 4811